


The Visitor

by IrenkaFeralKitty



Series: Oh, Were O Were [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Pseudo-noir, Shapeshifting, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-10-13 19:15:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20587661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrenkaFeralKitty/pseuds/IrenkaFeralKitty
Summary: Work is currently tagged as Mature, but could be elevated to Explicit if it ends up going that route. I simply don't know right now. Chapter notes will declare changes.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Work is currently tagged as Mature, but could be elevated to Explicit if it ends up going that route. I simply don't know right now. Chapter notes will declare changes.

They say the only way to truly understand America is to put rubber to pavement. The American Dream has always included the freedom to travel the road, going wherever and whenever you want. At this point, I’ve done my time. I’ve seen parts of this country I didn’t know existed and that I didn’t actually other places as well as I thought I did. I’m ready to turn in my part of the American Dream for a single night back home with my friends and family. But I didn’t have that anymore, did I?

It’s been months since I had a reliable roof over my head. I’ve been living out of my car and seedy hotel rooms, constantly traveling, constantly searching. It hasn’t been easy. The grease of fast food and roadside diners wears on you pretty damned fast, and I’ve lost count of how many damned quarters I’ve had to round up to do my laundry in shitty laundromats while a mouth breather stares at me from the corner.

Right now, I was pouring over my map while trying to ignore the steady pounding on the wall from the room next to mine, trying to tamp down on the sudden surge of jealousy that erupted inside me. It’s been so damned long since I got to as much as hold someone’s hand, let alone roll around in the sheets. I miss that intimacy, the sweat and heat of another body pressed against mine, the eruption of climax, and the drowsy cuddling afterwards. 

My marker traced my most recent drive, tick marks noting the number of days it took. My search has taken so damned long. I’ve been through an endless parade of police stations, hotels, and restaurants flashing a single photograph. Overtime, I’ve built up a picture of what’s been going on and a pattern is beginning to emerge. 

I’m still missing a lot of pieces, though. My line traces and sometimes cuts through the one I’ve marked in green. I don’t understand why the green line swerves away sometimes, or why it’ll disappear for a few days before reappearing back on track.

Next door, voices began to cry out, shouting as climax approaches. I have to hand it to that dame, she puts on a damned good show. If I didn’t know she was a professional, I’d have thought that seedy professor looking type in there with her was actually satisfying her. His voice is squeaky and hers full of breathy moans.

I wonder how much an hour with her would cost. 

I cap my marker and close my eyes. My blood surges at the final eruption of climax next door. I have to fight to keep from unbuttoning my pants and shoving my hand inside. 

The woman’s voice starts up again, accompanied by low male groaning. Round two, huh? 

Screw it.

I shove my map and marker away and stretch out on the bed, palming my cheap phone and earbuds. I know my destination already, after all. Brooding on it isn’t getting me anywhere. 

I hate loading video on my phone but the depraved depths of the Internet have greater sources of inspiration than eavesdropping on a trick in the next room. I was already so deep into the dark. What would it hurt to go a little further?


	2. Chapter 2

Wes didn’t race out of the house to get the mail as soon as it arrived. He waited an appropriate amount of time for the mail lady to pull up in her little car, place the mail in the box out front, and disappear around the corner of the street before strolling out.

He definitely hadn’t watched her arrive and taken a wistful dip into the fantasy of jumping into the mail delivery car as a racoon so he could discover all the secrets and wonders of the United States Postal System. And he most certainly didn’t know exactly how long it took her to make all her stops before she drove out of view. 

(Seven minutes, forty-three seconds, usually.)

Hobbie needed to stop asking if he had enough to do during the day. He was  _ fine. _ Knowing how long the mail carrier took to make her rounds was important tactical information. Someone had to mop the floor, do the laundry, and cook dinner. And it was important to update the calendar tacked up next to the pantry with everyone’s appointments, the trash and recycling days, and the release days for interesting looking movies. 

He was fine. Absolutely fine. 

He’d finally graduated college with a Bachelor’s degree (in General Studies, admittedly). He was a fully functional adult with several part-time jobs. And someone needed to keep the house running. The others could all do bits and pieces of different household chores but not all of them. Wedge was banned from the kitchen, Tycho was a muddled mess at doing laundry, and Hobbie had an astonishing inability to remember to take out the trash. (Or to get his canned drinks into the recycling bin.)

Wes’s role in their strange little family was absolutely vital.

Anyways, they had mail. The mail carrier had disappeared from the street so it was okay to go and get it now. It was a day just like any day.

The woman approached him while he was standing in front of the mailbox, absenting wiping gravel off his bare feet by brushing them on the legs of his soft pants as he went through the mail.

An old-ish sedan had parked in front of the Venni’s house two doors down and just sat for a minute, engine still running. Wes had watched it out of the corner of his eye, making a mental note of the make, model, and license plate number. Just in case. Then the car shut off and the driver’s side door opened. 

The woman was slow as she walked up to him. Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Her clothes were casual - simple jeans, faded New York Yankees t-shirt, and worn sneakers. 

Wes gave her a small nod and smile when she reached him, suddenly highly conscious of his Avengers pajama pants and old high school tank top. She looked around before speaking, the dart of dark eyes just barely visible through the lenses of her sunglasses.

“This seems like a nice little town,” she said in a casual voice. 

“I like it,” Wes replied with a small shrug. “You need directions or something?”

“... Or something.” The woman removed her dark glasses, folding the thin arms and hooking them on one of her jeans pockets. “I’m looking for someone. Got pointed to this address. I’ll admit, it’s a lot more… domestic… than what I was expecting.”

Wes took a moment to glance up and down the street. There was a film crew hiding somewhere, right? This couldn’t be real.

The woman moved suddenly, making him jump. Instead of a weapon, thankfully, what she produced was a single small photograph. 

“Do you know this man? He goes by the name Horn, Corran Horn.”

Frowning, Wes hesitated before replying. He didn’t have a good feeling about this. “I’ve seen him around,” he finally said. He’d caught how the woman’s lips had twitched when she showed him the photo. He must have reacted somehow. “He’s a detective, right? He has an office downtown.”

“Downtown. Then why did I get this address when making my inquiries?” she demanded.

“Dunno. Where were you asking around?” Wes replied. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that Corran lived here now.

The woman didn’t like that response, apparently. Instead of answering, she tucked the worn photo into her back pocket. “You got an address for that office?”

He shrugged. “It’s above the antique store and vacuum repair shop. I mean, they repair all sorts of stuff but it’s mostly vacuums in the window. There’s parking out front. I think his office opens at nine?”

The woman nodded, taking another look around. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Hey!” Wes called out as she began to walk away. “You got a name? In case I run into him, I mean.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder and gave a small wave instead of answering. 

As the sedan started back up, Wes closed the mailbox and stepped back up onto the curb, turning back to watch the car roll away.

“Well. That was weird.”

* * *

Something new had rolled into town. I could smell it in the water, taste it in the air. I’d gotten a good feel for my new hometown over the past hear and I could tell something had changed. 

Even my pack was unsettled. 

Trouble’s complaints about how the full moon made his students go crazy wasn’t new, nor was how we tumbled into bed together. No, the weirdness came from the others. 

Wedge was acting squirrelly as he hid something from us. He spent long hours away from home all of the sudden and couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes when questioned about it. The edge of his pants carried new grass stains and all sorts of bits of plant life had been walking into the house of late. 

Hobbie had been handed his first solo case at work and was driving all of us insane with his stress. And instead of helping him cope, Wes had been noticeably absent during this morning’s round of Imposter Syndrome. 

Speaking of, while it wasn’t too unusual for Wes to take off suddenly, his lack of communication about it was. They always knew when Wes was heading to his parents for some obscure ancient pagan ritual, when he was enlisted to babysit some of his many nieces and nephews, or simply going out for an extra long run. 

Instead of saying anything at all this morning, he’d darted out along with Trouble and wasn’t answering text messages. 

Wes was more in touch with the  _ otherness _ that defined their kind. Was he responding to something or was the foreign presence in town a reaction to him?

I didn’t know. And that worried me.

I rolled into my office earlier than usual, brooding over all the possible causes of this mystery. I had truly come to love my strange little family and didn’t want any of them to come to harm. Thoughts kept swirling in my head with all the different ways I could protect everyone and other possible tactics that would require I pull at least a few people in on it. I was prepared to do whatever it took.

“Good morning!”

I froze mid-step just inside the doorway of what had once been my apartment. Not once had such a cheerful chirp greeted me at the door, especially after I moved out and it became my full-time office.

“I didn’t feel up to shaving my legs for some kind of slinky dress, so I went for business-casual instead. I figure popping open a few buttons hits the sex appeal required for PI secretaries. How’d I do?”

Wes beamed at me from behind a desk that definitely hadn’t been there the day before. As he rose to greet me, I saw he was dressed in slacks and a bright purple button-down shirt. 

In a sudden flash, I was suddenly reminded of just how diverse looking yet attractive my friends were. I had always been abstractly aware of it the same way it was obvious that someone met society’s standards for attractiveness...

But my recent change in relationship status had changed how I looked at people. I wasn’t romantically interested in any of them - Trouble was more than enough for me - but I was suddenly finding my eyes lingering on… assets I had never paid any attention to before.

Wes said he was going for sex appeal and he’d nailed it. His slacks were well tailored, skimming over muscular thighs and hugging his ass. The bold purple shirt was well suited to his coloring and cut to compliment his broad shoulders and muscular body. He’d left several buttons undone at his neck that showed off his hairy chest, but not in a way that was too much. His sleeves were rolled up to expose his forearms and I couldn’t help but notice his large, strong hands. 

All in all, his clothes, when combined with his rich complexion, dark eyes, and unruly hair, really emphasized why he got so much attention from most women and a number of men. 

He didn’t compare to Trouble at all, but damn.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded once I’d gathered my wits. 

Wes grinned, looking proud. “A woman came by the house yesterday looking for you. Since you’re not exactly hard to find, I told her to come here at nine AM sharp. I figured it’s be bad to confirm where you live.”

“A woman? Who was she? What did she want?”

Shrugging, Wes sat back down and picked up a stack of papers. He started pulling paper clips off and setting the different sets of documents down in varying directions so the groupings wouldn’t be lost. “I dunno. If it’s something bad, I’m your backup. And if it’s fine, well, someone needs to get your records in order.”

My records-

I snapped my eyes down to the desk and suddenly recognized what Wes was holding. 

“Stop messing around with my case files!”

Wes snorted and rolled his eyes. “Like I could make a bigger mess,” he said shaking a finger at me. “I looked up the state requirements last night. You’d be in deep shit if you got audited, dude. This is a mess.”

I realized I was grinding my teeth and forced my jaw to relax. Before I could speak, there was a sudden knock on the door behind me. 

Wes sprang to his feet, somehow hurtling silently around his desk. He grabbed the collar of my coat and yanked it off me, then gave me a shove. 

“I moved your desk behind the partition,” he hissed, indicating the tall second-hand set of storage cubes I’d picked up last year. “Go sit! I’ll screen your appointment and get coffee if she’s okay. Go sit.”

The knock sounded again and I bit back a curse. No time to argue. I slipped behind the cubes and found my desk. A few folders sat on top with my most recent cases: one active and two that required some write-ups before I could file them away. As Wes opened the door and greeted whoever was on the other side, I opened one and scattered the papers across my desk so I’d look busy. 

“How do you take your coffee?” Wes was asking. His so-called screening must have checked out. The woman replied in a soft voice and my heart skipped a beat. 

Slow footsteps sounded as my appointment walked towards me. I stared, waiting with building anxiety for her to appear. 

“It’s been a long time, Corran,” she said when she came into view.

“It has been,” I replied. I gestured towards one of the chairs facing my desk. “It’s good to see you, Iella. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

My old partner sat down. She looked rumpled and tired. Her blonde hair was longer than I remembered and pulled back into a ponytail. She had no make-up on, not even mascara, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing her without it.

She was in trouble. 

“Diric’s missing, Corran. And I need your help finding him.”


End file.
